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191 B y the end of the 1960s a substantial majority of Quebec women were seeing a doctor from the onset of pregnancy. Almost all of these— more than 99 percent—were delivering their babies in hospital, and most followed medical directives in caring for their newborns. The very widespread adoption of new ways of thinking about pregnancy and newborn care and the incorporation of new mothering practices bear undeniable witness to the increasing medicalization of maternity throughout the 20th century. Despite the inaccessibility of private medicine for a large proportion of the female population, the uneven distribution of public health services throughout the province, the inherent limitations of these services, and the power struggle between physicians and other groups involved in child welfare, the medical approach to pregnancy, birth, and caring for the young child would eventually carry the day. As it became hegemonic, medical discourse left less and less room for rival ways of seeing and acting. It discredited the so-called traditional practices, presenting them as erroneous and even irrational compared with the objective, precise, scientific knowledge achieved by medicine. Little by little, it became almost impossible to question this knowledge; opposing it, attempting to challenge it, became an impertinent, ill-advised, and futile undertaking.1 But does this mean that we should conclude that medicine exerted a real hold over mothers, that physicians exercised absolute, unreserved control? Did women immediately accept a discourse that promised them problemfree pregnancies, safe deliveries, and perfectly healthy children, on condition they faithfully followed their doctor’s instructions? Or can we speak instead of resistance on their part? This final chapter sets out to take the pulse of women’s reaction to this process of medicalization. Instead of conceiving their response in terms of acceptance or refusal, of unthinking obedience or ferocious opposition, we will try to see to what extent, for what reasons, and on what conditions, they followed medical advice. This analysis is based six The Quebec Mother and Child 192 babies FoR tHe nation on statistical data and other documentary sources, to which are added three series of interviews containing in total the accounts of 66 women who gave birth mostly between 1935 and 1965. Care for Expectant Women Beginning in the 1920s, the medical profession started to insist on the importance of sound prenatal supervision, but more than 40 years would be needed before this directive was observed by the great majority of women, rich or poor, whether in urban or rural environments. Almost the same amount of time would be required for general practitioners, who initially provided this supervision, to do so following the guidelines set down by obstetricians and gynecologists, who were increasingly asserting their claim to be the true specialists in pregnancy. As we have seen, everything does indeed show that up to World War II very few women submitted to the early, regular, prenatal examinations recommended by private practitioners and public health doctors. Left mainly to private medicine, the supervision of expectant women was fated to remain minimal until the living standards of ordinary people genuinely increased, as occurred from the 1950s on. But it has to be pointed out that during the first decades of the 20th century, women did not make any greater use of the free services provided by the MDH, certain hospital institutions, volunteer associations (aMM, von), and even private enterprise (the Met). In some cases, particularly where the Montreal municipal prenatal clinics were concerned , the medical supervision was purely preventive, with patients being referred to their family doctor if complications arose, an arrangement liable to discourage those unable to pay for such services from attending public clinics. But certain clinics attached to hospitals, like that of the aMM, offered a free comprehensive medical supervision to the most needy, including medication, though they were still unable to convince patients to go to them as soon as they realized they were pregnant, or to attend regularly after that. In fact it seems that a lack of money not only meant the inability to consult a doctor, but also some difficulty in understanding the need to do so. Thus, the City of Montreal’s five prenatal clinics that opened in 1921 closed their doors again barely five years later because of the difficulty of “convincing women of the necessity of medical supervision of their condition.”2 Five of them became active again in 1940, but their use was not widespread during the 1940s and 1950s, for no more than a few...

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